Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“Hmm. Good question.” I moved to my window. “Reynard made a good point that from the third floor, you’d be looking down at the top of a head. Rhodes could’ve seen someone with a similar haircut and thought it was Agassi.”
“But you made a good point too,” she shot back, tapping my phone. “With no lights in the garden, you’d need more than a piddly burning cigarette to make out anyone. We know the killer turned on the light when they went into your mother’s room, why didn’t they draw the drapes? Why risk someone noticing the light was on in your mother’s room when it shouldn’t be, and going to investigate?”
“All great questions.” I peered out the window, thinking. “This is going to sound ghoulish, but I think we should recreate what happened that night. Try to see it from everyone’s perspective.”
She looked at me steadily. “I’m glad you said it first because I was thinking the same thing. I was also thinking... we need to start in your mother’s room.”
Courtney said it, and I agreed with it, but even though I left the room and followed her to Omma’s, I didn’t make it past the threshold.
I halted under the doorframe—flashes of that night assaulting me. The bloody walls. The overturned nightstand. My mother...
A gentle hand touched my shoulder. “I can do this if you don’t want to.”
I just nodded.
“All right.” Courtney squared her shoulders, stepping inside.
Everything had been cleaned and all the items relevant to the investigation had been taken away, so there was nothing to see but an empty bedframe and bare night tables, but still, being in this space felt wrong.
“I’m the killer,” Courtney began. “I come in with a weapon I concealed because even the dimmest-lit cop would’ve noticed someone skipping down the hall with a massive knife.”
“That— That’s true,” I croaked, finding my voice. Do this for Omma. Focus and do this for Omma.
The urging got me to take one step inside, but just one step. “Also the... the cop guarding the main hall into the east wing would’ve noted a woman holding a bag large enough to conceal a knife. Women don’t overlook stuff like that.”
“Also true,” Courtney agreed, sweeping the space. “Makes me think the killer had to be a man wearing a suit with pockets on pockets. Or even a knife hostler covered by a nice thick suit jacket.”
“Yes, yes.” Falling into the cold, hard facts of it helped pull me out of the trauma. “But we can’t discount the fact that they could’ve stashed the knife and change of clothes somewhere beforehand, so that they could walk past the cops without raising suspicion, and then retrieve them when they were ready to act.”
“But that still narrows things down,” Courtney pounced. “Because they couldn’t have retrieved it before they entered the east wing, so they had to grab it after, and then hide it in the same place so they could rejoin the party. How many hiding places between the guards and your mother’s room could there be?”
That sent us running back into the hall, marking where all the guards were, where all the entrances into my mother’s part of the east wing were, and all the rooms where someone could’ve hidden something to grab later.
“Unless this, this, or this guard was working with the killer, or are the killer, they would’ve flat-out said that someone walked past them into the hallway that led to your mother’s room,” Courtney said, pointing them out on our revised floorplan.
“Absolutely, and if that happened, the cops would not have spent all night compiling that list of everyone who went upstairs. They would’ve solely focused on the person who walked straight up to my mother’s door. No,” I said firmly. “I’m sure the only people the guards noted walking into this hallway that night were me and my entourage. And obviously I didn’t do it with a cop and a nervous jeweler shadowing me.”
“And there are no secret passageways or servant entrances to this part of the wing?”
I tensed. “No secret passageways,” I forced out. “Not to this part of the manor. There is a servants’ entrance, but it’s not a secret. It goes from the wine cellar to the third floor.” I tapped the door in front of me. “And it lets you out into the second-floor east wing right here.”
Courtney swept left to right. “We’re in a complete blind spot. No one would’ve seen someone enter the hallway here.”
“And if they were careful,” I said, moving down to where the hallway connected the main one leading out. “They could’ve run past to my mother’s room while the cop standing there had their back turned.”
“Can you enter this staircase through the wine cellar?”
I shook my head. “It’s locked and bolted. Expensive glass bottles and little curious six-year-olds don’t mix.”